Medieval Archers

While medieval archers are quite commonly associated with the Vikings and later on the Ottomans, the quintessential medieval archer was the British longbow fighter. Granted, in the beginning the archers of medieval times were little more than those peasants who were forced into military service and were able to operate primitive bows and arrows, which in many cases were less effective than simply throwing rocks at the enemy. Yet over time medieval archers discovered various means of increasing not only the effectiveness of the bow itself but also its reach, and suddenly the life of the medieval archer no longer forced them to be that of a lowly peasant, but instead it became one of celebrated heroics.

The clothes of a medieval archer who fought in the latter part of the Middle Ages was in large part reflective of the elevated station the life as a medieval archer offered to its occupants: flamboyant colors, custom tailed medieval archer costumes for the most successful archers or those of nobility, and of course pieces of armor for the medieval archer that would not impede the ability to shoot as many as 20 arrows in one minute. Perhaps it is because of the ability to use arrows in the same way that modern machine guns can shoot a large number of times in a given time frame that medieval archers graduated from simply being a back up or token fodder for the opposing army to becoming a lethal force that was protected on all sides by sword fighters and others in an effort to pluck off as many opposing fighters with the use of bow and arrow as possible.

After all, the more fighters the medieval archers were able to disable or outright kill from a distance, the fewer the soldiers had to fight in hand to hand or sword combat. Most memorable is the battle of Agincourt which pitted a sizeable French army against a ragtag army of British fighters who nonetheless succeeded in completely wiping out the French because of their archers. This battle became a case study for medieval archers which served kings of the Middle Ages to mold their offenses after the configurations used on that day to bring home the victory. In turn, this lesson in military strategy advanced the power of the British Empire and caused many opposing armies to crumble in assaults waged by a far smaller number of enemies than traditional warfare would have dictated for a sure outcome.